Devil's Harbor

by Alex Gilly

  Finn found himself sitting on his ass on the deck. He realized he must’ve fallen back and that his legs must’ve given way, but he had no recollection of either event. His vision seemed sharper and time slower. He saw Linda leaning over him, her green eyes burning bright; he saw her lips moving, but instead of her voice, he heard a tinkling sound, like marbles being thrown against a mirror.

  * * *

  Finn lay on the cot, trying to sleep. Every time he shut his eyes, he saw the shark charging up at him, breaking clear of the sea, and swallowing up the big yellowfin, its maw just inches from Finn’s arm. He figured the yellowfin must’ve been hunting the jack mackerel, and the commotion must’ve drawn the sharks. Prey being preyed upon by predators, themselves just prey to even bigger predators. The kind of convergence commonplace in nature. Finn had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just like Diego had been that night on the Belle.

  When he knew for sure he wasn’t going to sleep, he peeled himself off the cot and went above, expecting to find the refreshing breeze that usually picked up in the afternoon in these latitudes. Instead, it was hot and sticky, and the sea had an unpleasant, oily sheen to it. The world seemed especially still and soundless, with nothing moving except the Belle, and nothing speaking except her diesel. He looked up at the pale sky, noted the high-altitude streamers, and remembered the redness he had seen on the eastern horizon that morning. His shirt clung to his skin. When he took it off, the sun felt harsh on his back.

  It was near the end of Linda’s watch. He joined her in the pilothouse, drank straight from a plastic gallon container of water, and checked the navigation screen. They were about five hundred miles north of Cabo, traveling. Then he checked the electronic weather chart. It was hurricane season. The heat, the streamers, and the red sky pointed to something. On the chart, he saw a low-pressure cell southeast of their position that he didn’t like the look of.

  “Your face is healing,” said Linda. “I can see who you are now.”

  He looked up from the screen and smiled. “Whenever I was sick as a kid, my dad used to take me out on the water. ‘The sea is the best medicine,’ he used to say. He said salt water cured everything.”

  Linda drank from her mug. “It won’t cure Lucy,” she said.

  When Finn asked Linda what was wrong with her daughter, he saw a sort of practiced emotional blankness creep over her face, like a room being emptied of its furniture. He leaned forward and put his hand on hers, not sure where he was going with it.

  She smiled a joyless smile. After a moment, she pulled her hand away. “It’s all right,” she said. “My sister’s a nurse. She takes good care of my baby when I’m at sea.”

  They sat in silence for a while. Eventually, Linda said, “We’ll make landfall on Sunday. The Caballeros will meet us at the dock with the merchandise. Then we turn right around and head home.”

  After she said that, she gave up her seat at the helm and left the pilothouse.

  Finn was sweating profusely, though he was doing no more than sitting on the stool behind the wheel, the ship on autopilot. There was no ventilation in the wheelhouse whatsoever, and it was clear to Finn that the Belle had been built for Alaska, not Mexico. He had turned around to see if any of the rear windows opened when through them he saw Linda standing naked on the stern deck. He watched her spread a towel on the sun-cooked fish-hold cover and lay herself down on it, arms stretched out as though she were on some millionaire’s teak-decked yacht.

  He gazed at her for a long time, at her tanned face and neck and how it contrasted with the white skin of her breasts, her stomach and thighs. He stared at the dirty blond hair between her legs until he realized that he had become aroused. He turned away lest Linda glance in his direction and catch the hungry look in his eyes.

  Feeling guilty, Finn tried to think of his wife.

  But his mind teemed with predators and prey.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  At Cabo they turned east and headed across the mouth of the Gulf of California toward the Sinaloa coast. They made landfall early in the afternoon of November 1.

  By then, the change Finn had felt coming the preceding day had arrived: the wind had picked up out of the southeast and brought with it low, heavy clouds that blocked out the sun and turned the sea the color of concrete. Finn knew a storm was coming. He felt the tingle in his legs as he stood on the foredeck, leaning on the rail, watching the small fishing village of Puerto Escondido come into view.

  The village consisted of a huddle of flat-roofed buildings lining the pebble beach of a small bay. Rebars rose in awkward, forlorn clusters from their roofs, tokens of evaded taxes or of second floors to come in more prosperous times. An unpaved road led away from the village, past a lagoon and up a small, scrubby, treeless hill, over the rise of which Finn could just make out a cross atop a church spire.

  Twenty or so small, open fishing boats had been hauled up onto the pebble beach. Their names were painted in big letters on their bows. A handful of bigger commercial boats—to Finn, they looked like shrimpers—were tied to the dock. From the electronic chart, Finn knew they were on a remote, lonely stretch of coast in Sinaloa State, forty miles south of Mazatlán, near the mouth of a large lagoon fed by a river. The Belle passed through a plume of murky water on its way into the port, telling Finn that it had recently rained upriver, the mud now draining into the sea.

  They entered the shallows, the Belle pushing aside water and sending a steady outflow of little waves to wash up on the pebble beach. The vegetation beyond the pebbles was mostly dun-colored scrub save a few clusters of spare-looking palm trees. The pier was in a sorry state: one of its pylons had rotted and fallen away, and the planking around the gap sagged. The Belle was the smallest boat in San Pedro, but she looked like a giant compared to the other boats lined up at the Escondido dock. A pod of pelicans had claimed the pylon tops, one per pylon. The usual gulls loitered. The stench of rot rose from the seaweed washed up along the high-tide line.

  Finn was surprised by how quiet it was. There was none of the usual business of a port, even a small one. He saw no fishermen mending nets, no kids hand-spooling off the end of the dock, no harbormaster to push paperwork on them. In fact, he saw no one at all. The place was deserted, a ghost town. The only sign of human presence was a black Suburban with tinted windows and an out-of-place polished gleam lying in wait at the start of the dock.

  Linda brought the Belle up alongside the dock, threw her into Reverse, and stalled her so that she would drift in. Finn was impressed. Getting a boat this size with no side thrusters to a dock this small was a tricky thing. Linda handled it perfectly.

  He jumped ashore with a mooring line in hand and looped it expertly around a rusty bollard. Linda came out of the pilothouse, took the slack out of the line, and tied it off to a cleat on the foredeck. They repeated the operation with the stern line. They put a springer on.

  Finn looked down the deserted pier. He pointed his chin at the truck. “I’m guessing that’s for us,” he said.

  Linda nodded. They walked down the dock toward the Suburban. They got closer, and Finn noticed that the motor was running. He glimpsed an unshaven face and a mop of disheveled hair reflected in the tinted windows and realized it was himself. The car’s rear passenger window descended. A man with black hair and wearing a black shirt, the collar open, looked out at them.

  He said something in Spanish to Linda. She astonished Finn by replying in Spanish. She sounded agitated, her voice quavering a little, as though the man was giving her bad news. The man said something else, something that to Finn’s monoglot ears sounded final, then rolled up the window. The Suburban lumbered away. The man had never once looked at Finn.

  “We have to wait a day,” said Linda.

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s the Day of the Dead. He says nothing happens today.”

  Finn shook his head. “You’re not serious,” he said.

  Linda rubbed the back of her neck. “He says they
don’t do business on holy days.”

  “They’re fucking drug dealers.”

  “We have to wait.”

  Finn clenched his jaw. “So, what? We just sit here?” He had a bad feeling. He didn’t like being back on land. He wanted to be out on the water. “I don’t like it here. Let’s go anchor out in the bay.”

  She smiled. “I got a better idea. There’s a party in town.”

  He laughed humorlessly. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “What difference does it make?” she said. “I could do with the distraction. We’ll be safe, too. The cartel owns Escondido.”

  Safe. Finn remembered La Abuelita’s words.

  Puerto Escondido was the town where the five boys had boarded La Catrina. Never to be heard from again.

  They walked ten minutes along the dirt road, past the lagoon and over the hill, until they got to the main part of the town.

  Finn’s first impression from the boat had been of a dying, isolated, desolate place, and the main drag did nothing to improve his opinion. He found himself in a sullen, cinder-block, dust-covered town not pretty enough for tourists, with no obvious industry other than fishing, and even that looked like its best days were behind it. He followed Linda through the church square and into what he guessed was the town’s only hotel. A few local men loitered in the shade of the roof’s wide overhangs and stared expressionlessly at Finn and Linda.

  A vase of marigolds stood on the glass counter in the lobby, next to two statues of skeletons, one wearing an elegant green dress, the other in red, both with elaborate hairdos and carrying bouquets. He picked up the green one and examined it curiously.

  “They’re called Catrinas,” said Linda. “They’re festival decorations. They’re meant to remind you that death comes for everyone.”

  He turned over the doll in his hands. “She looks happy enough,” he said.

  * * *

  The room, which Linda said the concierge had told her was the best one available, was clean and simple. Finn noticed that it had only one bed, a low queen with a wooden headboard. The walls were whitewashed, the concrete floor painted ocher. There was a closet, a chest of drawers, and a mirror next to the bathroom door. Finn opened the sliding doors to the balcony.

  The balcony was on the corner of the hotel, overlooking an alley. The square was visible to the right. At the far side, he saw the church, the spire of which he’d spotted from the port. On the other side of the alley was a two-story building with an internal courtyard. Kids were playing in the courtyard.

  “What’s that, a school?” he said.

  “An orphanage,” said Linda, looking away. “I’m going to take a shower.”

  She went back inside. Finn stood on the balcony and watched the kids in the orphanage for a while, then turned his attention to the square. He saw workmen on ladders, hanging decorations on lines strung between lampposts. A stage and risers had been erected opposite the church. Off in the distance, he saw the bank of clouds he’d seen from the boat. It was moving in.

  He went back inside and lay down on the bed, shifting around on the thin mattress till he got comfortable, then closed his eyes and let his body slacken. He saw again the shark launching itself from the water and stealing his fish. He saw Linda’s naked body. He heard a noise and opened his eyes. Linda was standing in the doorway, her hair wet, a towel around her torso. She was crying.

  “Are you okay?” said Finn.

  She didn’t answer.

  She lay down next to him on the bed, put her head on his chest. Her wet hair smelled like a tangerine being peeled. She didn’t move.

  “I miss her so much,” she said, whispering.

  Finn put his arm around her, rested his hand on her bare shoulder. He lay like that, listening to the thrum of the ceiling fan and watching the shadows grow longer across the wall until his mind slowed and he fell asleep.

  * * *

  By nine o’clock, Finn, shaved and showered and wearing the crisp guayabera Linda had ordered up to the room for him, stood at a stall in the main square and bought two beers with American dollars that Linda had produced. He handed one to Linda, who was wearing a green dress with a lace neckline she’d conjured out of nowhere. It reminded Finn of the one he’d seen on the Catrina in the lobby.

  He looked up at the black, starless sky. The clouds had moved in, darkened, and grown fuller, and there was a purple tinge on their sagging bellies. He expected them to burst at any moment. Though he had showered and was in a clean shirt, he was sweating profusely and didn’t feel well. A kind of vertigo—a feeling as though his inner ear had been decalibrated—had taken hold of him the moment he had stepped ashore. The ground seemed unsteady and not to be trusted. It was as though being ashore made him seasick.

  A band took the stage. It consisted of five guys in matching dove-gray suits and cowboy hats. Cheerful music began blaring from the speakers. Strung between the lampposts were garishly painted papier-mâché skeletons, jaguars, eagles, and snakes. Locals in their Sunday best milled around the food and drink stalls. The women carried toys and orange marigolds and crosses and rosaries. As for the men, Finn distinguished two sorts. The first, the drunken majority, wore guayaberas like his, were short and broad-shouldered and looked like men who worked—farmers and fishermen. The second, the sober minority, were slighter and looked meaner. They were scattered around the square in groups of two or three, present but not participating in the festival. Some of them wore black pants and silky button-downs. Others wore police uniforms. And on all their necks, visible above their collars, were tattooed crucifixes. Finn thought of Perez. A man in a yellow-and-black skull mask appeared suddenly in his field of vision, startling him, then disappeared just as suddenly. He felt twitchy. The beer he’d yet to taste was cold in his hand, but the rest of him was overheating. Here he was, deep in the Caballeros’ territory, just three weeks after shooting dead one of their soldiers and intercepting one of their boats. What would they do to him if they found out who he was? He was surrounded by members of the bloodiest, most impenetrable and spectacularly successful of Mexico’s narco-gangs, infamous for their wacko blend of medieval, martial Catholicism—Finn remembered hearing that the gang’s leader, nicknamed the Craziest One, had even published some kind of doctrinal book—and a savagery that exceeded the already excessive violence of their rivals. The Knights moved billions of dollars’ worth of cocaine across the border every year, then set up rehabs for their drug addicts. Their lieutenants wouldn’t smuggle drugs on holy days, but the rest of the time they gladly beheaded uncooperative mayors and left their heads on spikes outside town halls. These were the people he was supposed to interdict. These were the people whose crimes he had dedicated his career to stopping.

  Not just him. Mona always said that the people she represented and fought for weren’t the criminals. They were just pawns in the game, human beings stuck in a broken system that accorded them little human dignity, that treated them as disposable. They were called “cheap” labor, “undocumented” migrants, “unauthorized” entrants—and that was just in the respectable, mainstream media. They were the people without status. The criminals, Finn remembered her saying, were the gangs who actually ran the game, who “taxed” the migrants and who murdered the ones who couldn’t or wouldn’t pay and buried them in shallow graves along the border. The gangsters had plenty of status, she said. They had songs written about them. They murdered everyone who opposed them, always brutally and often spectacularly, and because they got away with it, she said, they were feared and respected. These were the people he was now working with, thought Finn. Mona would be so proud.

  He felt the darkness creeping up on him. He didn’t want to think about Mona. He turned to Linda.

  “You ever been to one of these before?” she said.

  He shook his head. “What are they celebrating?”

  “Anyone who died recently.”

  He laughed. “Diego would like that.”

  Finally, he took a swig of bee
r. The cold needles pricked his throat and then he was watching himself drink as though from above. The vertigo that had plagued him since setting foot on land began to slip away. The knot in the base of his neck was unbound. He drank some more. He was glad Mona couldn’t see him, and he was glad he hadn’t tried to contact her. He became aware of Linda trying to say something to him.

  “I said, I’m glad you’re here,” she said, smiling, showing little teeth.

  Finn smiled back at her. The music—loud, cheerful, and mournful all at once—never flagged. He quickly drained his bottle dry and bought another.

  “What’s the band singing about?” he said.

  “How great the Caballeros are.”

  He made trip after trip to the stall, taking shots of tequila at the bar and chasing them with beers, drinking until Mona’s voice was so small, he could no longer hear it. The gangsters were still there, but he stopped being aware of them. An hour passed. His shirt, soaked through with sweat, clung to him. He saw rings of light around the streetlamps that hadn’t been there before; his hearing dimmed, as though he were underwater; and when he danced with Linda, he pulled her closer and she didn’t mind. He buried his face in her long tresses, breathed deep her tangerine scent, and was aroused by the way she had of resisting and enticing him at the same time. When his hand pressed against the small of her warm and damp back, he sensed in her the same sputtering tension between the polarities of recklessness and self-control that he had been battling all his life. They were both pushing themselves drink by drink to the point of no return. He tried to kiss her and she let him brush his mouth across hers without it quite becoming a kiss, like a stray electrical current searching for the ground. She smiled and told him to turn around, and when he did he realized that the music had stopped. He looked up at the stage and saw that the band had given way to a black-suited man, a sash across his suit and a mustache across his lip, saying a few nervous words into the mic.